


Not Any Woman's Dream

by apocryphile



Category: West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 19:05:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apocryphile/pseuds/apocryphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-ep for "Night Five".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Any Woman's Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: this - my first story after a bit of a drought - is considerably angstier than my usual fare. I also have absolutely no idea where it came from, it pretty much popped into my head fully formed when I was walking home earlier. Go figure.

When Josh quietly closed his office door behind him, Donna knew she didn’t want him to follow, but she almost couldn’t help it. She wanted him to comfort her almost as much as she wanted to comfort him. 

She found him with his back to the door, hands braced on the desk, his whole body shaking as his chest heaved with a silent sob. She knew that if she spoke, he’d ask her to leave, so she said nothing, walking over to stand behind him, resting her forearms against his back until he straightened up and turned to hug her properly. 

As soon as he wrapped his arms around her, any hope she may have had of staying strong to support him evaporated, and she burst into tears.

“Don’t… you…ever…do…that…to…me,” she choked out between sobs. “Ever.”

He rubbed her back and said nothing, and she pulled away from him to look him in the eye, wiping her cheeks.

“Promise me.”

He looked down.

“Josh!”

He looked up slowly, and she shifted to meet his reluctant gaze. What she saw in his face nearly broke her heart.

“I’m not your husband, Donna.”

“You might as well be!”, she blurted out before she could stop herself, “I l—”

She swallowed.

“I care about you just as much, and you have to promise me.”

“When that’s who you are, Donna, that’s what you do.”

“He had an infant at home. A little girl who’ll never remember him.”

He looked down again for a moment, but when she moved to pull his head up he met her eyes again before she could touch him.

“That’s what you do.”

“It’s not what you do, though.”

“I’m not a war reporter.”

“Well then.”

He sighed, and ran an unsteady hand through his unruly hair.

“Donna, I got shot right here in DC.”

“And you survived. You had the best care, and you survived. I just need… I want… please say you won’t go off somewhere like that.”

“I’ll go where I’m sent, although they probably wouldn’t…”

For a moment she looked as though she might pummel his chest. Eyes red from crying, her breath coming in little more than gasps, she gave him an imploring look.

“Why won’t you promise me? You’ve been through so much already, why would you even consider—”

He turned away from her abruptly, but he kept his hand at her waist and she stumbled slightly. For a moment his focus was back on her completely and the panic in his eyes in the instant he thought he’d hurt her reassured her, but only a little. When he’d made sure she was steady on her feet he patted her hip, gently, and then turned his back again, and she couldn’t hold back a hiccupping sob. 

“It’s not that,” he whispered eventually. “There’s no real reason I’d ever go somewhere like the Congo.” He hung his head. “It’s not that.”

“What, then?”

She walked around him, slowly, ducking her head to try and see his face. He took a deep breath and lifted his chin.

“I eat like crap… I never work out anymore, I don’t have time… and my lungs are weak which means my heart…” He was gaining momentum. “I have PTSD! And I was in therapy even before I got shot! It’s not going to be kidnapping, one day I’m just going to lose my mind, or keel over. And I can’t do anything about it…”

“You could,” she argued, “you could get a job where—”

“That’s just it!”, he cut in, “That’s my point! This is who I am, and this is what I do, and it’s probably going to kill me, and it won’t even get reported on CNN because it’ll just me some other lonely middle aged guy who didn’t take care of himself.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion, and when she moved closer it was tentative, cautious, and he squeezed his eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to see the concern on her face.

“I’m not any woman’s dream of a husband, Donna. Of a father. Because I can’t promise—”

She interrupted him so quietly it was a moment before he trailed off.

“You’re mine, though.” When he fell silent she repeated herself. “You might not be any woman’s dream, but you are mine.”

His eyes popped open. 

“You’ve been my dream… you became my dream…”

She shook her head slightly, struggling to find the words, and gave a sad little laugh.

“Why do you think my dating life’s been such a disaster? I’ve been looking for someone like you.” She sighed softly. “There’s no one else like you, Josh.”

That earned her the tiny smile she’d been looking for.

“Thank goodness for that.”

She nodded, earnestly. “Yes, because it wasn’t someone like you I really wanted. It was—”

He held up his hand.

“Don’t. Please.”

“Why not!? After all this time, when you just said you think your job could kill you any day, why not?!”

“That’s not… I wasn’t saying, carpe diem, life’s too short, Donna!”

“So what were you saying?”

He slumped, the fight gone out of him.

“I’m saying you deserve better. You deserve someone who can promise you they’ll stick around.”

“Josh, no one can promise that.”

“You just asked me to—”

“I asked you to promise me you’d never deliberately put yourself in harm’s way. If something happened to you… I would be… more than devastated. I’d feel like my life was over too. And I just wouldn’t…” She drew in a ragged breath, fighting for composure. “I wouldn’t want to be mad at you at the same time.”

He nodded, still keeping his distance, and when he spoke again he sounded almost shy. 

“If I had…. If I was… if you were…” he laughed softly at himself and tried again. “If we were together, and I did something to jeopardise that, I’d be mad at myself.”

She smiled at him, but she couldn’t resist continuing the debate.

“You just invalidated your own argument.”

He practically went cross-eyed trying to mentally untangle his own rhetoric, and while he was distracted she finally stepped closer to him. He jumped ever so slightly when he refocused and found her mere inches away, and she giggled. He grinned back, but only for a moment, and then he stepped away, turning aside with a sigh. 

“There’s a lot we need to take care of.”

She nodded quickly, wiping her eyes. He reached for the phone, pausing with the receiver in his hand.

“Would you check on CJ for me?”

She bit her lip, nodding again, willing herself to be calm and comforting. Smoothing down her hair, she started out the door, but he said her name just as her fingers closed on the handle. 

“You are too, you know that, right?”

She looked back at him, confused, and he smiled a little bashfully. “My dream. Of… well, everything.”

She flushed, but before she could respond he spoke again.

“We’ll talk more soon, OK? Just, right now…” He waved vaguely towards the wall, encompassing their colleagues outside, the challenges of the day and the world at large in one sweeping motion.

“Yeah.”

And then suddenly he was scrambling to his feet and rushing over to her and she froze, just for a second. When they were toe-to-toe he hesitated and she was the one who closed the distance. It was a fleeting kiss, barely more than their lips touching, a token rather than a first real anything, but it was enough. 

“I promise,” he whispered.


End file.
